An important challenge for human societies is that of mastering the complexity of Community Resilience, namely “the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations”. The above concise definition puts the accent on an important requirement: a community’s ability to make use in an intelligent way of the available resources, both institutional and spontaneous, in order to match the complex evolution of the “significant multi-hazard threats characterizing a crisis”. Failing to address such requirement exposes a community to extensive failures that are known to exacerbate the consequences of natural and human-induced crises. As a consequence, we experience today an urgent need to respond to the challenges of community resilience engineering. This problem, some reflections, and preliminary prototypical contributions constitute the topics of this presentation. A companion article is available at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67040428/Articles/serene14.pdf

1. Community Resilience:
Challenges, Requirements,
and Organizational
Models
Vincenzo
De Florio
MOSAIC:
UniAntwerp
iMinds

2. Times, they are a-changin’…
Less resources
Higher
peaks, harder
shocks
Higher
number
of users…
ICT
Businesses
Energy product-ion
& distribution
Transport of
goods & people
Water treatment
& distribution
CRISIS
MANAGEMENT
Understanding & rethinking
our organizations is crucial!

3. With the meter in the red zone…
• …organizations that
appeared to work fine
reveal their limitations!
– lose too much
– use up too many resources
– do not scale well
– intolerable to changes
– fail to address new aspects
→ Traditional approaches are
reaching structural limits.

4. Challenges
• How do we address “big” societal
problems such as crises & disasters?
• How do we rethink our organizations?
Which tools, which software could help?
1.Intro: What are crises?
2.A case study
This ppt
3.Requirements
4.Conjectures & models

5. CRISES
Single events
(or chains thereof)
with multiple
and diverse
consequences
NATIONAL
SECURITY
PUBLIC
SAFETY
PUBLIC
HEALTH
ECONOMY

6. CRISES
Single events
(or chains thereof)
affecting
multiple
"human
circles"
Business
organizations
People
Local responders
State responders...

7. KATRINA
One of
the five
deadliest
hurricanes
in US history

8. Katrina’s circles:
Private circles
People:
Individuals,
families,
neighbors...
Private organizations:
Business orgs, communities

9. Katrina’s circles:
Institutional circles
Local
institutions:
City police
Fire brigades
Flood rescue

10. Katrina’s circles:
State circles
State
organizations:
Depts of
emergency
management
Budget: (e.g., California): $80M/y

11. Katrina’s circles:
Federal circles
Federal
organization:
Federal
Emergency
Response
Org, $10.9B/y

12. Katrina’s circles:
National circles
Dept of
Homeland
Security
(created in
2001; abso-rbed
FEMA
in 2003)
The farther,
the costlier
Requested budget
(2015): $38.2B

13. Katrina’s circles
People
 Individuals, families, neighbors...
Private organizations
 Business orgs, communities
Local emergency response organization
 City police, fire brigades, flood teams
State emergency response organization
 Depts of emergency management:
http://www.fema.gov/state-offices-and-agencies-
emergency-management
Budget (California): $80M
• Federal emergency response
organization
 FEMA, $10.9 billion budget (2012)
Absorbed in the DHS (2003)
(Department of Homeland Security)
Private
circles
Institutional
responders
= Multi-level
system of
emergency
mgmt

14. How did it fare?
BADLY!
Slow initial
response
Strict hierarchy
→ Each layer is
SPOC & SPOF

15. How did it fare?
Slow reactions
Info/KW
collection/
dissemination:
centralized!
"Where in the hell is the cavalry
on this one?!"

16. How did it fare?
Wrong/
untimely
decisions!
Far-from-the-field
control
E.g. $12.5M to buy ice for K's
victims → unused/melted away

17. How did it fare?
"Poor comm.
among federal/
state/local
entities"
"Unadequate
readiness"
"Reduced effectiveness"
Major reason?

18. Major reason:
Institutional-only
response!
“[Responders] would have been
able to do more if the tri-level
system (city, state, federal) of
emergency response was able to
effectively use, collaborate with,
and coordinate the combined
public and private efforts.
How to do so [...] is a central task of
enhancing community
CARRI 3 Tech Report resilience.”

19. Community Resilience
• "A measure of the sustained ability
of a community to utilize available
resources to respond to, withstand,
and recover from adverse situations."
• Conjecture: three aspects.
RAND 3 Tech Report

20. Three aspects
1) Organization
Limited inter-circle
interoperability
Difficulty to propagate
KW & share assets
Individual-context worst-case dimensioning:
Worst-case analysis done w/o considering
collaborative sharing of resources
among the participating circles

21. Three aspects
1) Organization
Limited inter-circle
interoperability
Plastic, fragile
organizations
Difficulty to propagate
KW & share assets
Individual-context worst-case dimensioning:
Worst-case analysis done w/o considering
collaborative sharing of resources
among the participating circles

22. Three aspects
1) Organization
Limited inter-circle
interoperability
Expensive!
Plastic, fragile
organizations
Difficulty to propagate
KW & share assets
Individual-context worst-case dimensioning:
Worst-case analysis done w/o considering
collaborative sharing of resources
among the participating circles

23. Three aspects
2) Society
Private circles:
INACTIVE!

24. Three aspects
2) Society
Private circles:
INACTIVE!
Waste of
social energy

25. Pre-defined
roles /
behaviors
Three aspects
3) Behavior

26. Private circles:
DEMOTED!
Pre-defined
roles /
behaviors
Three aspects
3) Behavior

27. Private circles:
DEMOTED!
Pre-defined
roles /
behaviors
Three aspects
3) Behavior
Passive-behaviored
components
(objects!)

28. Centrifugal
forces
→ Emergence
failures
Behavioral
mismatches →

29. Centrifugal
forces
→ Emergence
failures
Behavioral
mismatches →

30. Conjecture 1
• Society must be part of "the solution"
• Society ≡ abundant "pool" of mobile
“resources” able to exercise complex
action
• Need: engineer ways to tap into the
nearly unlimited sources of “social
energy” of our societies.

31. Conjecture 2
• Fact: Organizational choices
determine the features of our systems
• Classic model (quasi-closed,
hierarchical systems): incapable of
any complex interoperability.
• Need: open smart organizations
– Self-optimizing
– Inter-organizational collective strategies
– Mutualistic relationships; collaborative
sharing of data and resources, etc.

32. Conjecture 2 (cont.d)
• Conjecture: Biologically inspired
distributed organizations may play a
key role in the emergence of
collectively intelligent responses
– Holarchies and fractal organizations
– “Simultaneously a part & a whole, a
container & a contained, a controller & a
controlled” [Sousa et al., 2000]
– Networks of peer-levels (members).

33. Conjecture 3
• A match should exist between the
behaviors exercised by the
societal nodes and those
exercised and expected by the
enrolling organization
• Community resilience only
emerges when this match is
sustained.

35. Community Resilience
• How?
• Through sociotechnical
organizations managing
communities of participating members.
• No preclusion (→ all society can
contribute)
• No constrain (→ behaviors are not
pre-assigned)
• Service-oriented communities,
fractal social organizations.

36. Service-oriented Community
• Sociotechnical organization
built by explicitly addressing
organization/society/behavior:
–Node of a distributed organization
–Taps into “social energy”
–Supports complex resilient
behaviours.

37. 37
Starting point: classical SOA
model
Service
description
Service provider Service
requester
Service registry
Publish Discover
Bind

38. 38
Service-oriented Community
Local reasoning &
coordination
Service registry
Service
description
Publish Publish
Bind
Member Member
Individual &
social concerns
optimization
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Location…
Events
People
`Things’
Components...
Member

39. Service-oriented
Community
BEHAVIOUR
Reasoning & coordination
Member w/
service & feature registry
Service
& feature
Publish Publish
Member Member
Individual &
social concerns
optimization.
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Location…
Events
People
Devices
Components
SOCIETY
ORGANIZATION
Bind

40. SoC for Ambient Assistance:
Mutual Assistance
Community
40

41. Mutual Assistance Community
• Aim:
– Optimally orchestrate devices & beings
– Complement existing healthcare orgs
– Special purpose SoC: organize intelligent
responses to AAL scenarios
• Not just safety nets:
– Reducing social isolation of elderly people
– Reducing costs best utilizing the social
resources.

42. Mutual Assistance Community
• Self-serve paradigm (mutually satisfying requests).

43. SoC as a building block
Local analysis
and coordination
Service and
feature registry
Publish Publish
Service
description
Member Member
Bind
Intra-circle
processing
Capabilities
Policies
Availability
Locations…
Roles &
situations
People
`Things’
Member
MMeemmbbeerr MMeemmbbeerr
SoC's …
Inter-circle
processing
Exception → Event propagation

44. Fractal Social Orgs
• Mathematical model:
http://goo.gl/gvVGH5
• Geometrical and audio
representations
– Modularity
– Self-similarity
– Fractal dimension!
http://goo.gl/vO8RKj

45. Elements of a Model
Model of the collective behavior in a “flat”
society of roles
Society = multiset of roles (=integers)
Example: S =
{0,0, 1,1, 2, 3,3, 4,4} =
2 GPs 1 patient
2 nurses
2 sensors
2 cars

46. Elements of a Model
Event: Condition c takes place
(for instance, a patient has fallen)
Response:
Intervention of 1 GP and 1 nurse.
Society S gets partitioned into two
“blocks”:
L = {0, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4} and
R = {0, 1, 2}.

47. 001122222222

48. 012345678

49. 001123344

50. Modularity
• "Templates" that repeat at
different scale
–Blocks that represent other
"sub-communities" (circles!)
–Societal responses to sub-problems!
• Fractal Social Organization:
fractal organization of
communicating & collaborating
communities

51. A fractal organization of SoC’s
51
C
I
R
C
L
E
S

52. Layer 0
(Raw
compo-nents)
...Upper
layers...
Layer 1
(Smart
Rooms)
Layer 2
(Smart
Flats)
Layer 3
(Smart Buildings)
iMinds project “LittleSister”

53. Little Sister
• Low-cost non-intrusive
telemonitoring solution
• System: multi-tier
distributed
architecture
• Specially designed
low-resolution sensors

54. Little Sister
• Services structured within hierarchical
federation reflecting structure of
deployment environment
• All resources wrapped as manageable
web services

55. Little Sister : Resolving Resources
• Seamless integration w/ external apps (layer 4)
• Information exchange: pub-sub mechanism
• Events “flow” upward — dedicated software
component available at each service group

56. Conclusions
• “We are confronted with a vast quantity
of plastic..." organizations!
• An organization "is like a parachute --
it doesn't work if it's not open" [ZAPPA!]
→ New models are needed!
→...With new models... new challenges
– A.o., how to guarantee the identity of the
"system"
– SoC and FSO: also tools to raise the
attention and enhance awareness
– Much to be done... we're on the move!

57. Thank you for
your attention!
vincenzo.deflorio@gmail.com
@EnzoDeFlorio
goo.gl/D9frjV